


Skygazing

by cecilantro



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Alternate title: Nerd Square Talks About Feelings(Possible Implications of poly nein if you squint, but the only kiss is molly+caleb)





	Skygazing

“Between us, you, you know,” Caleb stutters out, “We have embodiments of the, the four elements.”   
It’s such a lovely day.   
The sun is warm above them, the end of autumn always a time to remember the things they have all been through, alone and together, in a time so short already.    
Caleb traces the outline of a cloud with his eyes and points it out to Yasha wordlessly. It looks like a cat.   
“What do you mean?” The reply from Fjord is sluggish and oh, Caleb certainly doesn’t blame him. He feels much the same himself, Yasha’s fingers buried in his hair, and his in Fjord’s, they lie with Mollymauk in an overlapping square on the soft grass. The sounds of Jester and Beau sparring nearby are intermittent, Nott is playing referee.    
“Us four.” Caleb says, as though it clarifies anything, “We have fire, water, air, and earth. Though I do not know if you count your dreams as nightmares, or such a kind, Yasha?”   
She’s silent as she thinks, he feels her fingers tense in his hair and tug a little bit. She points out a sheep-shaped cloud with the other hand.   
“I think,” She says, carefully, “That I do, maybe. They are an odd mix, of relief and fear. I find comfort in the storm, though, I don’t think that quite matches up with… you three.”   
“I find comfort in th’ water, t’ be fair.” Fjord chips in, “I just ain’t so much a fan of coughin’ it up of a mornin’. So I’m like you, in that, it’s somethin’ between fear and relief.”   
“I feel only terror and hatred.” Molly’s tone is jovial, but Caleb reaches a hand out to him anyway, across the square, and Molly clasps his fingers. It’s a stretch, but nothing they’re not accustomed to by now.   
“Me too.” Caleb tells Molly, quietly, and Yasha ruffles his hair a little in comfort. Fjord tips his head back for the extra pressure on Caleb’s stomach.   
“I love you.” Caleb says, before his brain can stop his tongue, but he sticks by his words, “You- you are all, so… I did not think that I would… ever again, I-”   
“You don’t need t’ try an’ tell us in words, Caleb, I know how upset y’ get when y’ can’t find the right ones.”   
“Besides, darling, when we first met, you flinched when  _ Nott _ touched you. This,” He squeezes the tips of Caleb’s fingers, “Shows us how you feel. You don’t need to tell us.”   
“I want to.” Caleb frowns, runs his thumb back and forth over Molly’s scarred knuckles, “And one day, maybe, maybe I will. One day, I will find the words that I need.”   
“I don’t do words very well either.” They hear the smile in Yasha’s voice, “I think that sometimes, it’s the things you don’t speak that say the most.”   
They settle in silence to think this over. Caleb turns his head to brush, cat-like, a little harder to Yasha’s thigh. She’s right, the way she usually is, that they do not need words.   
Caleb looks at Molly and blinks in a certain way, and Molly is there at his side immediately to spirit him away from the noise and sights and smells that are building like a crashing wave on Caleb’s mind.   
Fjord’s grip tightens on his glass or the table, he mumbles to himself and looks wildly around, and both Caleb and Molly drop in either side of him to talk and drown out the whispers of that infernal, watery voice in his head.   
Molly puts a hand to his mouth, a certain pressure, a certain direction, and Yasha comes and drapes herself around his shoulders and insists they pick on Beau together, because they’re better together, they will never have to be apart and everything is okay.   
It applies to the others, too. When there’s a thunderstorm, Beau points out the trees and places hit by lightning to Yasha, and trails her halfway there, only halfway, never to impose and only ever to protect.    
The time that they were caught in the drought in the grasslands, and Yasha suffered for it more than anyone else, Jester had given up half of her ration of water for her, just for the hydration of it. And she’d curled with Yasha when they slept in the shaded areas during the day, because Jester is cool, and Yasha panics in the dry heat.    
When Caleb can’t think or breathe, when Molly and Fjord are too far gone, when they’re too loud and too much for him, Jester comes quietly to him and laces her fingers through his. She draws, silently, with the other hand, and just waits for him to come back to himself.   
When they catch Nott crying, they all band together. They collect for her. They talk to her. They test the elasticity of her boundaries and damp her down with a cloth when she’s too afraid to go near the water but is starting to smell  _ really _ gross. Molly gives up a vial of his lavender oil for her.   
Beau sleeps with Caleb. When she’s sad, and it’s so hard to tell with Beau, because she never lets anything slip, but when something hurts her in a way that gets under her skin, she seeks out Caleb and sleeps with him, back-to-back or shoulder-to-shoulder.   
“If we’re the four base elements, what about Jester, Nott, and Beau?” Molly draws Caleb’s attention helpfully back to the present, where Fjord and Yasha are busy snickering about the cloud shaped like a dick. He squeezes Caleb’s fingers one last time, and lets go.   
Caleb hums as he thinks.   
“Perhaps they are better viewed as planes.” He muses, aloud, “Giving us the positive and negative, alongside. Jester almost certainly fits with the idea of positive elemental energies, and Beauregard the negatives?”   
“Aw, poor Beau.” Yasha comments, almost sadly. Molly feels her turn her head to look over to her, “Is she that bad?”   
“Yes.” Caleb and Molly answer in tandem, and both give a brief laugh   
“I would fight and die for Beauregard, but-” he starts, and cuts himself off, and tries again, “No,  _ and _ . I would fight, and I would die for her, and her apathy about anything but petty, amusing feuds with the Empirical guard does land her firmly on the negatives of the energy. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is still a terrible source of power.”   
Yasha thinks about this, watches Beau as she bends backwards like a willow tree under Jester’s Sacred Flame.   
“And Nott?” She says, at last, and Caleb smiles,   
“She is the embodiment of all. The elements, the positive, the negative. Molly, would you-”   
“I already have.” Molly holds a tarot card upright between two fingers, doesn’t bother opening his eyes to look at it, “The World. The end of a cycle, often used to represent the union of the four base elements. Also represents completeness, the act of giving  _ back _ that which we have reaped.”   
Fjord rolls his eyes, strokes his fingers through Molly’s hair with only affection,   
“That was too well practiced, Molly.”   
“I try.” Molly’s smile is heavy in his voice. He slips the card back into his deck, over the top of Caleb’s breathy laughter,   
“We are on the same page, fate and I.”   
“Fate is bullshit, Caleb, I just know you well.” Molly opens his eyes to meet Caleb’s, smiling still, and Caleb sighs as he claws his way into turning and bending closer, close enough to kiss the smugness out of Molly’s voice.   
“Whether it was fate, dumb luck, or something, somebody else, that drew us together, I am glad. I am glad that I have you all.”   
Caleb settles his head back up against Yasha’s thigh, she threads her fingers back through his hair.   
Everything is okay.


End file.
